Hacker News: dicroce

New comment by dicroce in "Assert(): A Modern How To"

dicroce — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 11:10:10 +0000

Personally I'm not much of a fan of assert()'s... at least in the language I use the most (C++). It's not that I don't think you should validate the input ranges of parameters to functions its that in general exceptions are better.

New comment by dicroce in "Show HN: Wyrm – Solve algebra by touch, built on an open-source soundness engine"

dicroce — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 15:33:59 +0000

Yup. The goal was guide rails.... it'll still let you do non optimal things... just not totally illegal things. Hopefully if you do it enough you can take the guide rails off and still know what to do.

New comment by dicroce in "Show HN: Wyrm – Solve algebra by touch, built on an open-source soundness engine"

dicroce — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 15:31:00 +0000

Yes. PR's would be welcome on the core math engine.

New comment by dicroce in "Show HN: Wyrm – Solve algebra by touch, built on an open-source soundness engine"

dicroce — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 15:30:18 +0000

My goal is to build it up to Calculus.

New comment by dicroce in "Show HN: Wyrm – Solve algebra by touch, built on an open-source soundness engine"

dicroce — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 11:49:54 +0000

It uses https://capacitorjs.com/ and I'm super happy with this choice. I think it feels fast simply because solving simple algebra problems is very light work these days (and of course its all on device... so no waiting on the network).

New comment by dicroce in "Show HN: Wyrm – Solve algebra by touch, built on an open-source soundness engine"

dicroce — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 11:29:27 +0000

I updated the underlying engine (and its live on the web version here: https://dicroce.github.io/wyrm/home.html). There is some new powers examples in the drop down. Irrational roots are a potential next step.

Try the x^-1 = 2 example and click Guide Me.

New comment by dicroce in "Show HN: Wyrm – Solve algebra by touch, built on an open-source soundness engine"

dicroce — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 11:16:57 +0000

I'm adding at least basic support for random practice problems in the release I'll be dropping in a few days. If I can get to it I may also be adding a more gamified "practice" mode.

New comment by dicroce in "Show HN: Wyrm – Solve algebra by touch, built on an open-source soundness engine"

dicroce — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 11:15:43 +0000

Yeah I added the popup that appears when you hover as a means of trying to counteract this. I'll be looking for more ways to communicate this.

New comment by dicroce in "Show HN: Wyrm – Solve algebra by touch, built on an open-source soundness engine"

dicroce — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 11:12:49 +0000

This is actually a great find. I update the engine and the change is live on the web version. I will probably wait a couple of days on updating the mobile apps to see if any more fixes need to be made (there is a whole app approval process they have to go through and I want to minimize that).

New comment by dicroce in "Show HN: Wyrm – Solve algebra by touch, built on an open-source soundness engine"

dicroce — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 00:08:49 +0000

I will definitely consider using more color... hmm...

New comment by dicroce in "Show HN: Wyrm – Solve algebra by touch, built on an open-source soundness engine"

dicroce — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 20:51:20 +0000

The underlying math engine is written in typescript and is open source:

https://github.com/dicroce/wyrm_math

Probably it's most important feature for applications like this is that the id's of elements in the equations are stable (meaning, if an X has an id of 123 and a transformation moves it to the other side of the equals sign, it still has id 123... this allows you animate between states if you wish).

New comment by dicroce in "Show HN: Getting GLM 5.2 running on my slow computer"

dicroce — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:19:05 +0000

This is the approach I was wondering about.

Show HN: Wyrm – Solve algebra by touch, built on an open-source soundness engine

dicroce — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 11:16:18 +0000

There is a mobile game called DragonBox. It sort of tricks you into learning algebra by starting with very abstract manipulations of a puzzle that must follow rules... gradually the game teaches you more and more rules and also strips out the more abstract elements until on the last levels you are finally solving real equations. I loved it, it taught my kids algebra.... and it was just fun.

Over the years I often thought that there should be a calculator for Algebra that works this way... something where you can drag terms around and cancel & distribute with gestures, but most importantly enter your own problems. It should also do more kinds of problems than DragonBox allowed. So I finally decided to build it.

https://dicroce.github.io/wyrm/home.html

Here's a video showing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_STbS4zvIlU. If you'd rather just play with it: there's a limited in-browser demo (real engine, a few example equations, no download) on the landing page — https://dicroce.github.io/wyrm/home.html.

The app can be found on iOS (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wyrm-math/id6782342042) and as of this week on Google Play (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dicroce.wy...).

I also decided to open source the underlying math engine so others could build on it: https://github.com/dicroce/wyrm_math. My goal for the engine btw is to build it all the way up to Calculus.

Monetization is deliberately boring: the engine is free (MIT), and the polished gesture app is $4.99 once. No subscriptions, ads, accounts, or analytics.

I'd love feedback on the engine design — especially from anyone who's worked on CAS or proof-assistant-adjacent problems. And if you played DragonBox as a kid and wished it went further: this is for you!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48844046

Points: 81

# Comments: 24

New comment by dicroce in "LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don't know what to do"

dicroce — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 14:04:16 +0000

These are the last days of software. Use the AI's and build cool shit NOW.

New comment by dicroce in "You can beat the binary search"

dicroce — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 20:27:28 +0000

If you know about the distribution of keys you can do even better by factoring that knowledge into where you split.

New comment by dicroce in "Porting 100k lines from TypeScript to Rust using Claude Code in a month"

dicroce — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 14:45:57 +0000

This is actually pretty incredible. Cannot really argue against the productivity in this case.

New comment by dicroce in "[dead]"

dicroce — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 16:15:09 +0000

Lego blocks are how I like to think about software components... They may not be the perfect shape you need but you can iterate fast. In fact my favorite software development model is just to iterate on your lego blocks until the app you need is some trivial combination of your blocks.

New comment by dicroce in "High-performance header-only container library for C++23 on x86-64"

dicroce — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 20:48:29 +0000

Ok, maybe someone here can clear this up for me. My understanding of B+tree's is that they are good for implementing indexes on disk because the fanout reduces disk seeks... what I don't understand is in memory b+trees... which most of the implementations I find are. What are the advantages of an in memory b+tree?

New comment by dicroce in "We replaced H.264 streaming with JPEG screenshots (and it worked better)"

dicroce — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 00:10:06 +0000

Exactly my thoughts.

New comment by dicroce in "We replaced H.264 streaming with JPEG screenshots (and it worked better)"

dicroce — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 00:08:59 +0000

They should have used HLS. Its still pulling, and the client controls the downshifts if required...